Warning to Local Bakeries: Starbucks Is Testing Croissants, Other Pastries

After putting your local coffee shop out of business years ago, Starbucks is looking to do the same to that bakery down the street. The coffee behemoth recently announced plans to begin testing various warm pastries, croissants and other baked items in hopes that their success will ultimately lead to national distribution.

Nine stores in San Francisco will make up the test market, in which a new line of products—including a whole-wheat spinach croissant, a ham and cheese croissant, and a tomato, cheese and herb croissant—will be rolled out to determine how individual stores will handle logistics from deliveries to the baking process.

Although Starbucks already has a line of baked goods, new additions like the blueberry yogurt muffin, raspberry passion fruit loaf cake and vanilla loaf cake will be served warm and possibly replace some of the other, less popular items. The addition of these new baked goods stems from Starbuck’s $100 million buyout of the La Boulange bakery chain in San Francisco, which the Seattle-based coffee company believes will help strengthen its overall stance in the food service industry.

Starbucks plans to take La Boulange to national status over the course of the next few years.